sitting with our backs against the world
by McChanged
Summary: Puck and Rachel at college, screwing it up like champs. / Puck handles that situation like a man, which means he shuts off his phone and teeters the line between throwing up and getting pissed.


This is ridiculous. Someone needs to take away my laptop, and my blackberry, and the embarrassing amount of coffee that I consume to write these stories that will take forever to finish. And by the way, I wrote LoI far too long ago, and it was filled with far too much angst to be continued. I will reiterate my statement that this is ridiculous. But also kind of exciting, because I was halfway through chapter three of SPtGUYRO and just working out the kinks in Ilunga when I decided that LoI needed a sequel where Rachel and Puck fuck up in college. And then this happened.

I don't own Glee, and I would destroy it if I did.

Review kiddies.

* * *

Freshman year sucks mainly because Rachel is three thousand miles away in New York making a name for herself while he struggles in Chicago to pass the English class they have mainly for foreign exchange students, athletes who have a thing against protective gear, and the preppy kids whose parents had to donate like whole fucking libraries in addition to their kid's tuition.

She makes him call her like the whipped boyfriend he is every night while he's icing his newly formed bruises from practice and she's bandaging up the damage ballet shoes do to her feet.

They talk about nothing because their lives were only a daytime soap opera in high school and there's really not time for that sort of talk worthy drama in college.

But at the end she says I love you and he only says you too because that's the kind of fucked up intimate exchanges a previous juvenile delinquent and the girl who used to make him want to set himself on fire have.

-0-

Christmas break she flies to Ohio three days after he gets there, during which he kills time by playing video games with Finn and wondering how his mom found another VHS of Schindler's List after he accidentally dropped the last one in the washer machine.

And then, when Rachel finally shows up after spending time with her fathers, his sister ends up getting a secretive addition to her weekly allowance when she totally ignores the sock on his door.

She tells him it's a bad idea the first day, but she's half naked and there's been a long ass span of about three months where he hasn't touched her. So yeah.

On the second day she just laughs as he grabs her waist for the third time to haul her back under the sheets and bury his face by her collarbone.

The rest of that school year pretty much goes like that. Except they fight over spring break because Puck thinks that spending a week wasted in Florida because of a promise the made to Finn in the fifth grade is so much better than spending time with his mildly attractive, talented girlfriend who will help him develop his laking skill when it comes to singing.

At first he's all like, uh yeah, and then realizes that, one: he should have fixed the mildly attractive thing, and two: that answer would have only worked on Quinn because that's what Sam said and he's already bought them both tickets.

(He calls her like fifty times the first two days he's there, and only has to promise that they will all totally sing back-up for her to get her on a plane. He keeps her drunk enough that she thinks they're singing behind her as she stumbles do the street, so win for him.)

-0-

Summer he spends in New York and she displays the city to him widely like it's something that already thrums under her skin.

He meets her friends, and she talks about them like they're Glee, which makes this weird feeling he used to get when she was dating that Brett guy flare in his chest. But she smiles at him like she did in the hospital, and he gets really distracted when that happens.

August he leaves with this strange feeling like Rachel is more a part of New York than she should be but everything goes good the first three months or so. He practices and calls and if she doesn't pick up sometimes he accepts her excuses hours later because Rachel's been known to run herself into the ground.

-0-

And then, he seriously considers dropping out his first semester of his sophomore year when a guy who sounds vaguely like Jesse St. James picks up Rachel's phone like he's her fucking answering machine.

But, hell if he's not a sadistic bastard so he doesn't drop out, just tries harder and let's Becky from his stupid English class ramble drunkenly the next time Berry calls.

The next morning there's thirty text messages from people ranging from the girl he actually hurt to people he's pretty sure weren't supposed to get his new number. Like Mercedes, who does something along the line of threaten his balls.

They're all a varying form of 'you're a fucking dick Puckerman' and yeah guys he kind of knew that years ago. Way to be up on the times.

Puck handles that situation like a man, which means he shuts off his phone and teeters the line between throwing up and getting pissed enough to buy a bottle of tequila and drown himself all day.

Around midnight, he calls Rachel just to get her actual answering machine that goes something like this: "hello you have reached the cell phone of Rachel Berry. Leave a message. Unless you're my dick of a boyfriend then don't bother calling me until you are fully ready to sing me a song emphasizing your sincere regret for being a dick. Bye." And then he gets scared because she managed to make dick sound simultaneously terrifying and classy, but he fills up her answering machine anyway.

Around four a.m. a guy blearily answers, who by the way still sounds suspiciously like that St. James kid, and tells Rachel she needs to answer her freaking phone.

(And Puck totally wants to break his knuckles on Jesse's face even though Puck knows that he's in California getting it on Mrs. Robinson style with Rachel's mom. Which is really creepy but also kind of hot and totally understandable because Rachel is like a mini Shelby.)

Anyway, so that happens, and Puck calls Monica from his biology class to ask if she can tutor him.

November's not really a good month for him.


End file.
